“Ferrari looks more competitive in qualifying – where there’s no 100kg fuel limit to worry about – than in race day trim when it seemingly has to run less power to remain within the instantaneous fuel flow limit of 100kg/hour.”

“Formula One is not short of technical brainpower and within months, perhaps only weeks, Newey and his rivals will have their troublesome new cars running sweetly. Until then there is likely to be a rare chance to enjoy grand prix racing as it used to be before the computers, with their hatred of the unpredictable and inefficient, took control.”

“Arguably the most significant performance that day came from one of the support races: a young Scotsman named Jackie Stewart had won the Formula Three race in a Cooper (entered by Ken Tyrrell), after he had pulled a 48-second gap… in three laps’ time.”

Comment of the day

@Petebaldwin has misgivings about how much fuel-saving we’re going to see on Sunday:

I don’t care what settings the car is in and whether the engine is turned down – F1 should be about drivers pushing 100%.

If they’re having to coast around for 90% of the race, what’s the point in watching? I could sit outside my house and watch cars cruise around.

I’m really excited about this season but I am also really nervous about Sunday! I know tomorrow is going to be great but I’m worried that Sunday will simply be cars cruising around slowly afraid to race each other.@Petebaldwin

Happy birthday!

On this day in F1

Alain Prost confirmed he would not be returning to F1 20 years ago today. He announced on French television that despite having tested McLaren’s MP4-9 a few days earlier, he would not be returning to defend his world championship title.

With practice for the first race of the season just ten days away, McLaren quickly announced Martin Brundle would drive for them. This was initially on a race-by-race basis, with Philippe Alliot also on-hand to drive if needed.

Meanwhile JJ Lehto returned to the cockpit to test for Benetton as he continued to recover from neck injuries sustained in January.

20 comments on Mercedes a second faster than us – Button

Regarding the new rule: why would anyone serve the 5 seconds in the pits instead of having it added on to end time? Is it just a matter of whether another pit is needed before the race is over? Five seconds in a pit could really be 5.25 seconds, for example, and with a time penalty you will be 5 seconds ahead in the race and so have more control over the race.

Maybe you expect to come out behind another car, so sitting back for 5 seconds keeps you away from the dirty air. Or maybe it puts you in the path of another faster car which you can hinder and try to keep behind, whereas waiting for the penalty might allow the other car to easily coast up behind, within the seconds.

Imagine car A is 28 seconds in front of Car B. Car B is significantly faster with 8 laps remaining. Car A’s tires are dead and has to take a 5 second penalty. If the pit takes 20 seconds plus the additional 5/6 seconds for the penalty he’ll be 3/2 seconds in front. He then might have a chance to defend his position and still be ahead compared to Driver A’s 8 second lead after the pit stop whittled down under 5 seconds by the end of the race. Very situational but there are reasons for it.

I’m not asking for the penalties, I’m saying given that they exist, why would anyone prefer it during a pit stop if there is a choice? Only in very special circumstances would it seem to be preferable to the driver or his team

@omarr-pepper Yeah I meant that Mercedes might be as far ahead of the rest as McLaren were in 1988. Of course, average gaps have gone down, but this gap is huge. Again, we need to watch the whole first weekend to have any idea of how the season might pan out, and even that is not exactly representative of how things are.
I’ve just got a feeling that other teams need to come up with something special in order to stop Mercedes, and that’s not happening anytime soon. Probably not this year.

@paeschli Not really, all that it showed was that Mercedes are strong in a range of conditions. The wet is a great leveller, and we don’t have an exact indication of the pecking order yet. And of course, it is the Sunday performance that matters, if Merc’s long run pace in FP2 is anything to go by, we won’t have a fight on our hands if the race is dry tomorrow..

While nicely worded, I think the COTD is nicely worded, I would think that the teams learnt from 2010 when they were all overly cautious in the first race instead of really pushing only to find out that they hadn’t even gotten close to the tyre limit.

Now off course they do know far more how much fuel they are using, but I doubt they are going to be just coasting. And off course Melbourne is about the second most fuel heavy tracks on the calendar, its going to be more easy next race already even without teams managing to optimize it more and more.